I know that Obama said that his primary concerns for his second term were major immigration reform and gun control. It’s probably just a coincidence, but despots often feel compelled to deal with those two issues. They usually deal with guns by confiscating them, while their immigration policy generally involves box cars headed off to Siberia or Auschwitz.

But, now, thanks to sequestration, he has to put those plans on the backburner so he can terrify Americans into believing that a tiny reduction in rising expenditures will lengthen the lines at airports, reduce the ranks of air traffic controllers and turn teachers, cops and firemen into sidewalk apple vendors.

I used to think I was a fairly cynical character, but that was before Obama came on the scene. Compared to this Chicago thug, with his obvious contempt for everyone who isn’t Obama and his conviction that he can feed swill to the American people and convince them it’s sirloin, I’m a mere babe in the woods.

Still, when even the New York Times took him to task and the Washington Post started bestowing Pinocchios on him and his puppets, Obama had to realize that he had badly misplayed his attempt to make political hay out of this particular crisis.

What it led many of us to realize is that if only we had a free (from left-wing bias) press in America, it would matter far less than it does whose rump was planted in the Oval Office.

Speaking of rumps, I used to wonder why Clark Kent never got canned by the Daily Planet. After all, he was never around to cover any of Superman’s headline-grabbing exploits. The same question comes to mind when I see the members of the White House Press Corps sitting politely, scribbling down Jay Carney’s lies, like a bunch of overpaid stenographers.

I mean, the nation is more than $16 trillion in debt, Obama says we don’t have a spending problem and those oafs who brag about speaking truth to power don’t even give him a horse laugh? You could dismiss them as pimps, but at least pimps don’t pretend to be something they aren’t or to be peddling something they’re not.

For that matter, when the other 54 Senate Democrats demur to Harry Reid’s wishes as to how to vote and even which pieces of legislation he will permit them to vote on, I can’t help wondering why they don’t all have those unnaturally high voices one generally associates with harem guards.

When Obama boasted that he was a skeet shooter, it’s possible that he wasn’t actually lying. After spending the last five years watching the men and women of the media echoing his every word, he may simply have confused shooting skeet with shooting fish in a barrel or blasting holes in sitting ducks.

As for those on the other side of the aisle, I know it’s fashionable, even in some conservative circles, to claim that Republicans don’t have a message, but with a corrupt media ignoring their message or lying about it, it’s no wonder that even some Republicans are hopelessly befuddled. Let’s face it, if it weren’t for Fox News, “Benghazi” would be nothing more than an eight-letter answer in a crossword puzzle.

Finally, little 7-year-old Josh Welch was eating a Pop-Tart in his Baltimore grammar school when his teacher, who no doubt believes she is underpaid, decided he was shaping it into a gun. This led to his being suspended for two days. Josh explained, “I just kept biting it and tore off the top, trying to shape it into a mountain.”

The school sent out a letter to all the parents, explaining why they thought it was a threat, stating, “A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.”

When I read that, I made what I regarded as an appropriate gesture in the general direction of Baltimore. At the very least, the school authorities should learn the difference between a gun, a mountain and a gesture, however inappropriate.

I’m just wondering if it escaped everyone’s attention, as it had mine until eagle-eyed Arizonan Don Melquist pointed out to me that every single kid who has been suspended over the past several months has looked like one of those freckle-faced tykes who was always popping up in Norman Rockwell paintings.

How is it that it’s never a black or Hispanic tot? Is it that they are carrying actual guns and it’s a lot safer for craven school administrators to discipline kids packing Pop-Tarts? Or is it that political correctness, as usual, trumps every other consideration, including commonsense and sanity?

All in all, I figure little Josh was just lucky he and his folks don’t live in New York City. For simply daring to bring a loaded Pop-Tart to school, Nanny Bloomberg would have had him doing hard time in Sing Sing.

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